It has been a long time coming but it finally seems that anti virus is becoming a little more effective in VDI environments. Trend Micro has used the new EPSEC VMSafe API to achieve a lot of resource savings.

There’s a report associated with it, a Tollyreport, so read with caution. Nevertheless, it is good to see the innovation finally starting here.

The new EPSec API allows security vendors to build anti virus/malware solutions in a single virtual appliance that can protect all VMs running on a single server, with NO AGENTS installed inside the VMs it self. Trend Micro is the first to have this to market with their currently available DeepSecurity 7.5 product. Symantec and McAfee will hopefully follow soon as well.

To proof that this new way of implementing AV protection is working efficiently, trend asked the Tolly group to research/benchmark this, and what a results did they found! The ‘old school’ scenario consumed 1.7 to 8.5 times more resources. This resulted in 29% to 275% improved workload density!

Especially if you are currently running a VDI environment or planning soon to implement one, I would highly recommend you read the tolly report and plan your Anti Virus/Malware strategy accordingly.